These numbers tell who’s really getting all the transfers

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I’ll give you 100 guesses as to which school, up to a month ago, had received the most bona fide athletic transfers through a legitimate change of address or a hardship waiver this school year.

Here’s a hint: It’s one of the smallest public schools around. Football glory? Not recently.

The answer is Corona del Mar, which received 24 student transfers into its school through April 8. Second is Peninsula with 23.

Among the top 31 schools -- all of whom had at least 10 transfers -- only one was a private school, JSerra, which had 18 and shared third place with Atascadero, Beckman and Riverside King. Notably absent from the list was Orange Lutheran, which caught flak for having seven transfers into its football program.

These figures do not reflect those one-time transfers before the beginning of a sophomore season. However, the more research that comes to light regarding this debate over public and private schools, the more the complaints of the public schools seem to crumble. Public schools would have you believe that all the transfers are headed to private schools.

Jerry Halpin, the Brea Olinda principal who represented the Century League in its recently withdrawn proposal for separate playoffs for public and private schools, said the numbers have nothing to do with the league’s original proposal: ‘Our idea is that private schools have open enrollment and can accept whoever they want with whatever criteria they want’ ... and public schools ‘don’t get to handpick their students, we have to accept whoever applies as long as they meet our criteria.’

Paul Orris, the Corona del Mar athletic director, was a little unsure what to say.

‘We dealt with many in the fall time period, but it was across the board,’ he said. ‘It’s not like they were all going to football or cross-country, it was a wide variety of things.

‘It is a nice place to live if you have the means to do it. What drove it, I don’t know.’

Here are the numbers from the Southern Section office:

2007-2008 Sports Season *
CAUSE PUBLIC PRIVATE
Hardship 271 66
Valid Change of Address 849 34
Totals 1,120 200

TOTAL NUMBER OF MEMBER SCHOOLS: 569
TOTAL NUMBER OF TRANSFERS: 1,320
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN MEMBERSHIP: 62% (354)
PERCENTAGE OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TRANSFERS: 85% (1,120)
PERCENTAGE OF PRIVATE/PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS IN MEMBERSHIP: 38% (215)
PERCENTAGE OF PRIVATE/PAROCHIAL SCHOOL TRANSFERS: 15% (200)

SCHOOLS WITH 10 OR MORE TRANSFERS (Public or Private)
SCHOOL HARDSHIP ADDRESS CHANGE TOTAL
Corona del Mar (Public) 1 23 24
Peninsula (Public) 1 22 23
Atascadero (Public) 4 14 18
Beckman (Public) 1 17 18
JSerra (Private) 5 13 18
M.L. King, Jr. (Public) 6 12 18
Quartz Hill (Public) 1 16 17
Knight (Public) 0 16 16
Lancaster (Public) 0 16 16
Valley View (Public) 0 16 16
Great Oak (Public) 2 13 15
Redlands (Public) 0 14 14
San Luis Obispo (Public) 2 12 14
Mission Viejo (Public) 1 12 13
Moreno Valley (Public) 4 9 13
Palmdale (Public) 0 13 13
Perris (Public) 1 12 13
Thousand Oaks (Public) 2 11 13
Yucaipa (Public) 3 10 13
Edison (Public) 1 11 12
Granite Hills (Public) 3 9 12
Westlake (Public) 3 8 11
Whittier (Public) 1 10 11
Chaparral (Public) 4 6 10
Colony (Public) 1 9 10
Dana Hills (Public) 2 8 10
Highland (Public) 4 6 10
Pacific (Public) 0 10 10
Poly/Riverside (Public) 6 4 10
Silverado (Public) 0 10 10
Tesoro (Public) 3 7 10
* Year to Date (through April 8, 2008)
Source: CIF Southern Section

-- Martin Henderson